John Sinclair (born October 2, 1941) is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars.

As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers.

Sinclair eventually left the US and took up residency in Amsterdam. He continues to write and record and, since 2005, has hosted a regular radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, as well as produced a line-up of other shows on his own radio station, Radio Free Amsterdam.

Sinclair was a member of the Class of 1960 at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, but he dropped out after his first year.[1] Sinclair subsequently attended the Flint College of the University of Michigan, now the University of Michigan-Flint. During his time at UM-Flint he served on the university's Publications Board, school newspaper "The Word", and was the president of the Cinema Guild. He graduated in 1964.[2]

Born in Flint, Michigan, Sinclair was involved in the reorganization of the Detroit underground newspaper, Fifth Estate, during the paper's growth in the late 1960s. Fifth Estate continues to publish to this day, making it one of the longest continuously published alternative periodicals in the United States. Sinclair also contributed to the formation of Detroit Artists Workshop Press, which published five issues of Work Magazine. Sinclair worked as a jazz writer for Down Beat from 1964 to 1965, being an outspoken advocate for the newly emerging Free Jazz Avant Garde movement. Sinclair was one of the "New Poets" who read at the seminal Berkeley Poetry Conference in July 1965.

After a series of convictions for possession of marijuana, Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1969 after offering two joints to an undercover narcotics officer.[9]

The severity of his sentence sparked high-profile protests, including an infamous incident at the 1969 Woodstock Festival wherein Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage and seized a microphone during a performance by The Who. Hoffman managed to shout only a few words about Sinclair's plight before he was forcibly ejected from the stage by guitarist Pete Townshend.[10][11]

With a more successful protest, John Lennon performed his new song "John Sinclair" on television[12] and recorded it for his next album, Some Time in New York City (1972),[13] though by that time Sinclair had been released.[14] With "directness and simplicity", said one critic,[12] the lyrics lament Sinclair's intended harsh punishment: "They gave him ten for two – what else can the bastards do?"[12]

Sinclair has been writing a newspaper column on cannabis, "Free the Weed," since the mid-1980s. The primary focus of Sinclair's column has been the social history of cannabis use in the US; however, he often touches upon the global campaign for its legalisation.

Since the mid-1990s Sinclair has performed and recorded his spoken word pieces with his band The Blues Scholars, which has included such musicians as Wayne Kramer, Brock Avery, Charles Moore, Doug Lunn, and Paul Ill, among many others. He also performed as a distinctive disc jockey for New Orleans' WWOZ Radio, the public jazz and heritage station.[21]

On March 22, 2006, Sinclair joined The Black Crowes on stage at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, and read his poem "Monk in Orbit" during the instrumental break in the song "Nonfiction".[22] Two days later, he went back onstage at the Black Crowes show in the Paradiso, reading his poem "Fat Boy" during the long instrumental jam following the Black Crowes' song, "How Much for Your Wings?".[23]

Created in 2004, The John Sinclair Foundation is a non-profit organisation based out of Amsterdam, Holland.[26] Its mission is to ensure the preservation and proper presentation of the creative works- in poetry, music, performance, journalism, editing and publishing, broadcast and record production- of John Sinclair. To date, the foundation has produced books, zines, records, and documentaries highlighting John Sinclair's contribution to the historic cannabis legalisation effort, rock music in Detroit, and psychedelic communitarianism.